Today's Hospital Notes.

The nurse who took me to the changing cubicles today asked whether I was wearing jogging pants.

‘Jogging pants?’ I queried.

‘Yes, jogging pants.’

‘No.’

‘So what sort of trousers are you wearing?’

‘Ordinary jeans.’

‘You’ll have to take them off, then.’

I knew this, of course. I’ve had enough CT scans to know that one strips down to socks and underwear and then dons a hospital gown to minimise any embarrassment. (It isn’t entirely successful, actually, because you still look a right Charlie sitting there with bare legs sticking out from under a blue cotton dress, but I suppose it helps.) The nurse wasn’t yet finished with me.

‘The next time you come,’ she continued, ‘wear jogging pants so you don’t have to take them off.’

‘But I don’t know what jogging pants are,’ I replied with just the merest hint of indignation. ‘I’m one of the pre-jogging pants generation. Haven’t you noticed?’

‘Very well, I’ll fetch you a gown.’

‘Can’t I have scrubs?’ I pleaded. ‘They’re so much more becoming.’

‘No. We’re short of scrubs.’

So gown and bare legs it was. You know, one of life’s many tragedies is that we come to an age where we just have to accept that such matters are no longer worth worrying about. The problem is, I do.

 

*  *  *

 

When I first arrived and took a seat in the outer waiting area, there was a woman sitting opposite who said ‘hello.’ Not wishing to seem impolite, I said ‘hello’ back. And then she continued with a statement which was quite unintelligible, to which I replied ‘Oh, I see.’ An hour and a half later, when the whole procedure had been concluded, the cannula removed and the ordinary jeans reinstated, I walked back that way to find her still sitting there. ‘Are you still here?’ I asked. She replied with a statement which was quite unintelligible, to which I replied ‘Oh, I see.’ And then I left. I blame the masks, you know. They’re not conducive to verbal communication, which is probably a benefit in my case.

 

*  *  *

While closeted in the inner waiting area, awaiting the procedure which one radiograper once described as ‘like going into a washing machine feet first just as the spin cycle starts’, I decided to kill a little time by reading the notices. One of them said that if I wished to have a chaperone I should ask for one. I mentioned it to the next nurse who walked through. ‘I didn’t know I could have a chaperone,’ I began. ‘Should I ask for one next time so as to feel better protected from the unwarranted attention of young women in uniforms?’ She took me seriously and answered in the affirmative. People do, you know. Why do people nearly always take me seriously when I’m joking? Is there time for me to alter my ways, do you think, or should I just hope for a terminal diagnosis?

There was another notice which identified the statistical probabilities involved in the causal relationship between X-rays and cancer. I mentioned to one of the radiographers that there was something ironic about a post-cancer screening process which involves going through a machine which can give you cancer. She didn’t get it either, so now I’m waiting to be informed about a petition among the clinical staff requesting that I be barred from entering the Royal Derby Hospital and directed to their sister hospital twenty miles away.

 

*  *  *

And finally, I decided that the next time I go in there I must ask the receptionist whether they have an Ariadne box. The thing is, you see, nearly every department in the Royal Derby Hospital is a veritable Minotaur’s maze of corridors, waiting areas, interview rooms, doors which lead into mysterious closets to which only the handmaidens have access, and treatment rooms.

‘What’s an Ariadne box?’ the receptionist will query.

‘A box containing balls of string, so I can tie one end to your desk and keep the other with me in order to find my way back out again.’

She won’t get it, of course. She’ll ask ‘but who is Ariadne?’ to which I will reply ‘erm…’